Twin Devils
by ProbableLurker
Summary: In which, instead of deciding to have Jason killed, Hoyt decides that he's worth more alive to him than he is dead. With a proverbial knife at his brother's throat as well as the throats of all of his friends, Jason agrees and he becomes little more than Vaas and Hoyts' pet killer. Jason/Vaas, Jason/Hoyt. Contains dark themes, more details inside.
1. Chapter 1

**Warning: This fic depicts themes of Rape/Non-con, Graphic depictions of violence and drug use. If this triggers or just squicks you, please don't read it.**

* * *

There were a lot of ways that Jason had expected all of this to turn to shit for him – Maybe Vaas would kill him and do it right this time, maybe Buck would have succeeded in keeping him and Keith hostage, maybe the Rakyat would hand him over to Hoyt or someone else once he outlived his usefulness. There were a lot of ways that he expected things to go down and they all ended, _predictably_ , in his death.

Jason wasn't dead though. Not yet, at least. One of the pirates had knocked him out – maybe it was even Vaas – but that's no surprise. He's used to being knocked out. He's been smacked upside the head by pistols and rifles so many times that he probably has some kind of permanent brain damage. What is surprising, though, is that when he wakes up there's no immediate danger for him. There's… _nothing_. When Jason wakes up, he doesn't see anything – it's so dark, his mouth is stuffed up and he can't move. He can hear chains rattling as he struggles to get out of his binds – no cloth or rope this time, no, they aren't going to be taking any sort of chances anymore.

A feeling of hopelessness overcomes him, even as he keeps struggling – screaming and flailing himself around to get himself out of this mess. He keeps it up for what feels to him like hours, and by the time that he has tired himself out he can barely breathe and his body is marred by self-inflicted bruises. Long after he's calmed down and sedate, the space around him is still pitch dark and he still can't see a thing.

It occurs to him that they might just leave him here to die. Why bother shooting him, when you can just leave him to the elements? Leave him to starve and dehydrate after begging and screaming for help. Odd. He never would have thought that Vaas would be so detached as to kill him like that, he always thought that the pirate lord had a more personal touch – a more deft touch – with murder. "It's simple like this," Jason thought, feeling grateful in an alien sort of way.

He wouldn't need to worry anymore – about anything, not his friends, not Citra, not The Rakyat, not even Riley. As selfish as it was, he was a little relieved and he almost has a sense of peace as his head begins to swim and his body swings heavily on the chains – going limp as he passed out again and slept for what he was sure would be the final time.

The first thought that Jason had as he regained consciousness was that it was too fucking bright like people were shining flashlights directly in his eyes while he had the worst hangover of all time. It was fucking miserable. "Jason, Jason, Jason…Jason Brody." A man with a South African accent said, "25 years old, born on a Military Base in Bell's Grove, California. You moved around with your family from base to base every three to six months until you were fourteen and moved back to California." He could hear Hoyt – that's who this had to be, it sounded just like the man on the radio call – flipping through pages and Jason guessed that he got his file somehow.

It didn't matter how, but he had to wonder if Willis was playing both sides and set him up. It wouldn't be a surprise. "Your father died in combat when you were ten…and your mother is a goodwill ambassador, for the UN. Important family, with a lot of high expectations that someone like you couldn't live up to." Up until this point, he had been talking about Jason and not to him, but then Hoyt asked him a question, "What would your dead, war hero dad or your goodwill ambassador mom think if they found out that their son is a murderer?"

When Jason didn't answer the slaver's expression went from jovial to angry and disrespected, "Hey, Jason look at me?" Hoyt called his attention, snapping his fingers in the younger mans' face. Hoyt spoke evenly and calmly, "I asked you a question when I ask you a question I expect a fucking answer. So, what do you think your goodwill ambassador mommy would think if she found out that her son is a psychopath, hmm? Think she'd be scared, or might she be proud of you?"

Jason didn't answer. He couldn't. He had no idea where Hoyt got all of that information about him but he didn't care. He knew that all the man was trying to do was egg him on and it was working, fuck was it working. He struggled to get himself to his feet, barely managing to stand – shaking the whole time as he tried to launch himself towards Hoyt. He landed a foot away from the man, a chain around his neck compressing around him and choking him half to death as he collapsed onto the floor.

Hoyt didn't seem impressed with his display of aggression. "See, I told you he would throw a fit when he woke up." He commented in a casual tone of voice as Jason coughed up spit laced with vomit and blood, as he hyperventilated with panic overtaking his senses. "He's so fucking touchy… but I see why you like him, Vaas, I really do." He looked over at Jason purposefully, "He's a good killer. A goddamn machine. He really could be useful to us, so long as someone keeps him on a tight leash and makes sure he takes orders…"

Jason frowned and worked to gather the strength to speak, "If you're going to kill me, just kill me." He said in a blasé sort of voice. "All of this menacing talk is…well, it's not as cute or charming as you think it is so if you're gonna kill me can you just get it over with already?" He didn't really expect them to respond to what he said, but he needed to say it – say something to them, look them in the eye and tell them that they could go and fuck themselves.

Jason had kept his eyes on Hoyt, so he didn't notice Vaas walking up behind him until the pirate lords' arm was braced over his throat – restricting his breathing as he did so. "What the fuck?" he snapped at Vaas, "What the fuck?" His voice came out quiet and raspy in his initial panic. "Shh, shh, shh… shut the fuck up, Snow White." Vaas whispered in his ear, smiling against his cheek as he clearly felt Jason's heart beating in his throat. "We're not done talking yet. Don't be rude, hermano, you're so fucking rude." With that, the pirate lord turned his attention back to Hoyt.

"I was going to kill you, at first." Hoyt hummed, "Maybe torture you a bit, cut you up, fuck you even. If I had the time… but then I had a talk with Vaas and I realized, why kill you when I could get my money's worth out of you? So, I'll give you a choice, Jason. You can either work with us, and we'll let your friends go home. They'll be safe, so long as you don't fuck us over." Hoyt smiled in a way that made him look like a parody of a kindhearted person. Jason snarled at his expression – he hated him, more than Vaas and Buck combined. "We'll be keeping an eye on them, oh, and your mother, just in case you try. Or, you can say no – I will bring your brother and all of your little friends down here, kill them in front of you and leave you to die."

A big part of Jason wanted to spit in Hoyt's face and tell him that he'd rather die on his feet than live comfortably on his knees but he didn't have that option. It wasn't just him that would be getting tortured and killed if he did that. "Some choice." He said to the men in front of him and shook his head in defeat. "Fine. I'll… do whatever you want. Just let them go." Jason didn't realize that he had been crying until he felt the wetness all over his cheeks. It was all so fucking surreal and unfair.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, he was supposed to save his friends and get the hell out of here. Not end up right back where he started, only worse off than he was before. "Atta boy."

The slaver hummed, one of his calloused hands gripping Jason's jaw hard enough to bruise as he held the younger mans' face in place. He was so close that the smell of Cuban cigars and bad cologne suffocated his senses. Vaas was too close too, he could feel the pirates' beard scratch over his neck. It was all just too much for him. It was all just too much, too soon and too fast.

"You made the right choice." He continued on as he forced Jason's jaw up and put out his cigar on his throat, eliciting a ragged scream out of him as he did so. "Take good care of your puppy, Vaas. Make sure he doesn't shit the bed." He said as he walked out, leaving Jason and Vaas alone again.

He didn't know what to expect from Vaas – he rarely ever did – when Hoyt left them alone. The only thing that he could be sure of, was that it wouldn't be pleasant for was gonna hurt him, just because he could, because he had proven himself the bigger and badder monster between them. He expects violence, but violence doesn't come – not yet, at least – and instead, all he can feel is the dull throb of pain as Vaas inspects Jason's bruising and the burns over his throat. "Tch, he got you good, didn't he? Fucker just can't help himself…" He said, speaking more to himself than he was to Jason. "Doesn't matter though. It's just you and me right now, Jason." Vaas murmured to him before he hoisted the younger man up into his arms with way too much ease to be natural.

Jason had been too weak to struggle or even snap at Vaas as he loaded Jason into his truck – he was still chained and collared like the animal that he had no doubts he would be treated like from now on. He wondered, as his vision faded to black again and he fell into another fitful sleep, how long it would take for him to just get used to being treated like one.


	2. Chapter 2

Vaas hadn't expected Snow White to be in peak physical condition, not after how long he had been isolated, starved and dehydrated. Still, he didn't expect to need to float him over to the makeshift hospital they had set up on his island. It was more of a clinic than anything else, with spartan furnishings and medical equipment hanging on all of the walls and tables.

They had one doctor set up in the camp. She was an Asian woman with her hair tied up in a bun that was so messy that it was basically just a rat's nest on top of her head. When Vaas dumped Jason's unconscious body down onto the cot, she didn't miss a beat and quickly took to stripping the younger man out of his clothing and doing everything in her power to keep him in stable condition.

She had Jason hooked up to all of the machines and an IV running fluids through his system in little more than moments. "Should I have him strapped down?" She asked Vaas, tone all business-like as she spoke for the first time since he had arrived. She looked back at Jason, who was lying dead still on the cot. "He might be confused or delirious when he wakes up and try to run away…"

The pirate lord nodded, "Yeah, strap him down." He agreed and she was already coming towards Jason with thick leather belts to hold him down. "Whatever you do, you make sure that he doesn't fucking run off." Vaas didn't stay for more than a few minutes after that – he needed to take something to chill him out and he didn't want the medical equipment to blow up because he needed to light up a smoke.

****  
 _Jason was walking through the jungle, unsure of where he was supposed to be going. All he could tell was that he needed to keep going forward – he needed to get away and he needed to get forward. He needed to get away. He needed to get away. That was all that he could think, that he needed to get away and that he needed to get away NOW._

 _He ran and ran – he kept running until he was standing in the middle of a circle, all of his friends looking at him with a far off kind of gaze like they were looking past him. Riley is looking at him like he hates him as he points the gun in his face, he's shouting something at him that Jason's ears are too plugged up to hear what he has to say. He took the path of least resistance and dropped down onto the floor, closing his eyes in acceptance of the inevitable._

 _Then Riley was gone and the floor dropped down from below him, leaving him to do nothing but scream helplessly as he fell down face first into an open lake. His body was swallowed by the water until his knees were covered in seaweed and he could feel himself drowning._

 _Jason was desperate to claw himself back up to the surface but the water kept forcing him back down below the surface. By the time he managed to get himself back up to the surface he had almost blacked out entirely and he was left a coughing, retching mess on the floor. Someone pulled him up off of the ground, helping him to his feet. His eyes opened, closed and then opened once again before he was looking into predatory, amber eyes and being stripped down to his very essence._

 _He couldn't see the figures – couldn't discern between them, could only tell that there was more than one of them – as they pulled and pried at his skin and limbs. They were tearing him apart and they were going to eat him alive._

 _He couldn't do anything about it, he couldn't stop them or even say no._

****  
When Jason finally came to, he was immediately on the alert for some kind of danger. It made sense to panic, considering that he was almost naked other than what felt like a threadbare shirt and strapped down to some kind of cot, the sickly sweet scent of medicine pervading his senses. He doesn't even remember blacking out, all he could remember was being in the back of Vaas' truck while the pirate lord babbled on about all the kinds of things he was going to do to Jason when they got back to his camp, filling him with a sense of dread for the future.

He looked wildly around the place, fighting against the bonds in a total fight or flight response to his confusion. He desperately tried to shake off the wires attached to him and the needles injected inside of him with little success. The only thing he managed to accomplish was to get the doctors attention.

"Hey!" She snapped, pushing him back down onto the cot. "Hey, hey, you're alright. You're in the… well, you're being treated here and I'm a doctor." Jason kept thrashing around for a few moments, screaming nonsense, but she kept soothing him patiently until he stopped moving.

"Wh-what the fuck…" Jason muttered as he looked around, still confused and delirious. "Who the fuck are you… where the fuck am I?" He babbled out questions in a lazy, slurring tone. He couldn't feel a thing, so many drugs were running through his system, and he felt so out of sorts about everything.

"My name is Elaine. I'm the doctor here." She spoke slowly and purposefully like Jason was touched in the head and she needed to be gentle with him. "Your name is Jason, correct?" At Jason's hesitant nod she smiled and continued on, taking a small flashlight out and shining it in his eyes. "Okay, you've been in and out for a few days now. I need you to answer a few questions for me, okay?"

"Oh… okay…"

"How old are you? Where do you think you are and what day is it? Just answer them the best you can, there are no wrong answers here."

"I'm 25…I'm on the Rook islands? And it's… daytime? I think?"

"Okay, good. That's good enough. You're brains not broken, at least not enough to hurt your cognitive functions. Vaas brought you here himself, so I'm guessing you're important to him." She spoke in a casual sort of way, like all of this had been completely normalized for her and it was just another day at the office. It probably was, now that he thought about it. "If you are, then it's good for me that you could recover as well as you did."

He let out a weak laugh at that, finding that he liked her presence – she was comforting to have around while he was helpless and hopeless like this. He had not wanted someone normal around him as much as he did in a long time. It grounded him a little and brought him back to a less hysterical place. Elaine smiled at him in a gentle way before walking off and returning with another tube, "I'm going to give you something else for pain, just to keep ahead of the pain." She didn't wait for Jason to consent or even for him to say another word before she was applying the medicine to a drip.

The drugs ran their way through his system quickly and left him feeling fuzzy and so high that he could barely keep his head up and his eyes open. He rested back against the cot, lowering his eyes until they were barely more than little slits topped by his lashes. He was still droopy and out of it when Vaas came back into the room – making a bit of noise as he did so, so that both of them understood that his presence was known to them. Jason sluggishly shuffled himself back into the sheets – trying to hide himself from the pirate lord, even though he was entirely in plain sight.

Within moments, the pirate lord came over to him, sitting down on the cot where Jason was strapped down. "He looks like he's getting better. Good job, Hermana." Vaas complimented, looking at Jason in a way that had him feeling dressed down and insecure about himself. The pirates' fingers slid over the fabric of Jason's shirt, too exploratory for Jason not to have to think too much on what would happen to him when they were left alone. "Now get out. I need to have a word with Snow White and I want some fucking privacy."

A look of understanding crossed her face and she nodded, "Do try to be gentle with him," She directed in a sheepish tone, looking over at him purposefully with a strange sort of look – it was something close to pity, but not quite there. "He's not going to keel over right now but he's still very weak-"

Vaas interrupted her quickly and told her to get the fuck out.

Elaine swallowed fearfully and hastily obeyed, happy to get the hell away from him as soon as she could. Jason couldn't really blame her for it, he would be happy to run away and he would if he be running right now with her if he could.

The door slammed closed and Jason felt all of the air suck out of the room. Vaas laughed a little as Jason impotently squirmed around in his binds, watching him struggle for a few moments before he decided to untie him. "That doctor back there likes you." The pirate told him in a conversational sort of way as his hands took to sliding over the younger mans' bare thighs and up his hips. "She hooked you up too. Got you all kinds of fucked up, hermano, shit look at you…"

Jason cocked his head to the side in confusion, but he didn't say a word in response – he couldn't even think of what to say to that. Vaas snapped his fingers in Jason's face, "Hey, hey! HEY! Jason, fucking pay attention when I talk to you." He snapped, his mood going from friendly to entirely hostile in moments.

"What?" He exclaimed quietly, as Vaas growled at him about how rude it was to ignore someone when they speak – how he hated it when people did that to him. Suddenly Jason felt exhausted and he tried to distract the man however he could. "Okay, okay, you're right…I, I'm sorry." He said, just to get Vaas to stop spiraling into a rage if for no other reason.

Without thinking about it, Jason tried to pull himself off of the cot when a wave of dizziness came over him and fell down onto the cold, concrete floor. "Ugh… fucking great." He muttered to himself, digging his fingers into his thighs in his frustration. He was so tired and drugged up that he didn't even try to pick himself up off of the ground and instead opted to curl up on the floor in a show of defeat.

He could hear Vaas laughing above him and he groaned, the whole fucked up situation coming full circle for him. "You're so fucking dramatic, Jason." The pirate lord mocked him, manhandling him back up onto the cot. "No running, remember? You play nice and I don't have to get one of my boys to take out your whole fucking family." He tapped two of his fingers to his temple to enunciate the threat. Jason's blood went cold and his entire body went stiff in response to that, "I wasn't trying to…" He started with a weak attempt at a defense of himself when he felt Vaas' hand grip his cock, "Wait- no, you can't-" He protested and desperately squirmed away from the pirate's touch.

Vaas didn't like that one bit and pushed Jason back down, hard enough to hurt him."Shh, fucking relax." He chastised, rough fingers digging into Jason's hip hard enough to leave bruises. "I'm not gonna fuck you. Not yet. You're not ready for me to fuck you yet, I get that."

Jason shook his head – a part of him had expected something like this would happen, why wouldn't it, when Vaas and Hoyt were using his family as a bludgeon against him. He just had hoped that it wouldn't happen right as he woke up from some kind of delirious fever dream about his own death.

He had hoped that it just wouldn't happen to him so soon and even though he knew that he was really in no place to resist the other man's ministrations toward him, he couldn't help but push at Vaas' hands to try and get them off of him. It was like he had completely forgotten where he was and the situation that he was in, right up until he noticed the scathing and downright frightening look on Vaas' face.

All he could do was go limp and stopped resisting, allowing the pleasurable – whether he wanted them to be or not – the sensation of a firm, rough hand gently stroking over his shaft. He couldn't detach entirely, not with the other man so close by – his presence keeping him as wide-eyed and alert as he could manage in his fuzzy state – but it became more far off, more manageable for him to deal with.

He thinks that Vaas is just keeping a running commentary to fill up the silence in the room, "You went through some real shit back there, _hermano_." The pirate hummed, his fingers twisting over the base of his cock, spreading his pre-cum up and down the shaft of it while his other hand pulled the hospital shirt up until it was bunched up at his shoulders.

He tells Jason that he wants to make this nice for him and the ridiculousness of the situation overtakes all of his thoughts. He doesn't want this, he doesn't want this at all – but he certainly doesn't want Vaas to make it nice for him, he doesn't want to enjoy this. He wants it to hurt, make him tear and bleed. He can deal with pain and outright abuse, but he doesn't think he could handle learning to like this. The chill of the room had the hairs on his arm standing on end like there was too much static electricity in the atmosphere and he was the only one that was affected by it. The pirate lords hand moved up over his stomach, appreciative fingers gently touching all over the many scars that Jason had accumulated on his body during his months-long rampage through Rook.

Vaas' hands move up his stomach and over his chest. Suddenly, they were pinching and pulling at Jason's nipples until they were hard and raw from all of the abuse that he had taken to them. He whines, high and tight in his throat as Vaas picks up the abuse to his hard and leaking cock. He murmured things into Jasons' ear – telling Jason just how pretty he is and how he had waited so long to fuck him – the whole time as he expertly stroked the younger mans' cock until he came into Vaas' hand with a soft, stuttering sob of a moan.

His breath came out in staccato huffs as he tried to regain his composure over everything. Vaas turned Jason's head towards him so that he was practically forcing the younger man to look him in the eye as he slid his cum soaked fingers in Jason's slack mouth. He pulled a disgusted face as the bitter taste of his own semen spread over the length of his tongue.

"Get some rest, yeah?" Vaas said moments after he pulled his fingers out of Jason's mouth. "And when you get better, Jason, when you get better you can come with me to Citra's fucking temple and we can have a fun fucking time taking them all out together." He grinned in a predatory and excited sort of way.

Jason's effect was blank as he took all that in, "Okay." He responded in a dim and bland tone of voice, as though Vaas had just told them that it was going to rain soon, or something monotonous like that instead of the horror that the pirate told him. The truth was that he wanted to be angry about what he was going to have to do to Citra and the rest of the Rakyat but he couldn't muster up the emotional energy to care all that much about it.

He only had so much room to care about people and his family was taking up all of that space right now. Who knows, he thought with a grim sort of optimism, maybe they would end up killing him first and he wouldn't need to worry about keeping Vaas, Hoyt and whoever else was in control of him happy with him.

No, that would be too simple and easy – with his luck, there was no way that they would manage killing him – and he was sure that if he died, they might go after his family still and then there would be nothing that he could do about it.

Then Vaas left him alone in the room – not tied up, or even restricted, he doubted that the door had even been locked. Jason wanted to scream, to cry, to run around the room breaking everything, to just fucking do something, but he didn't. He didn't do anything, he just shifted onto his side and stared at the wall until exhaustion overtook him once again and he was finally able to fall into a heavy, dreamless sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Jason spent most of his recent days locked up three by ten concrete room that was occupied by groupings of old mattresses piled on top of each other and heavy looking cylindrical bins and a small, bathroom off-shooting one of the walls of it – saving him at least some humiliation. Vaas had just… left him in there – locked him in more like – after he had once again been healthy enough to be taken out of that dingy, makeshift clinic.

He had told Jason that he had things to take care of and he didn't trust him not to run his mouth or do something else stupid like that while he was doing it so he would stay at the camp. Since then, the only contact that Jason had had with anyone was a tray of food thrown down in front of him by one of the pirates every so often – the men always held weapons and were wary enough around him to catch him if he tried to run. He wouldn't though, not if he didn't want his entire family gutted in front of him.

He wasn't sure how long Vaas had been gone, as there was really no way for him to effectively measure how time had gone by, but if the pirates gave him food once a day then it had probably been a week, maybe more or maybe less. He couldn't be sure at all, but how long he had been in there didn't matter to him as much as the feeling that the walls were closing in on him.

The room was small already but every hour, every minute and every second that he spent in it – alone – drove him closer to screaming his lungs out and clawing at the door to get out of there – even if it tore his nails off and left him bleeding and aching from all of the efforts that it took him, so long as he could get himself out that door and breathe fresh air again.

Jason did everything he could to occupy himself and keep the claustrophobic anxiety at bay. He paced around the room, he worked out – did push-ups, sit-ups, running in place – anything to make him feel less like a bird hammering around in its cage, desperate for escape. He's been alone for too long and he hates being alone in general. Without any physical or emotional contact, he starts to doubt his own senses and his sanity.

Eventually, he settled down onto the mattress, pointedly ignoring the way that his heart was palpitating and how painfully tight his chest was feeling as he did so. He needed to do something to calm himself down, even just a little bit, just enough that he felt like he wasn't going to keel over in minutes.

He stands up, wanting to walk off to the bathroom to get some water on his face to ground him and bring him back to reality, but in the moment that he stands a wave of dizziness comes over him and he collapses back on the ground. "Fuck. Wouldn't be shocking if I found out that they were drugging me…" He muttered to himself, curling up on the mattress in defeat. There was nothing else for him to do but sleep and hope that he could find some peace in his slumber.

* * *

Vaas entered the room for the first time in weeks with a smile on his face, he was excited to see Jason again, after leaving him alone in this room for so long. He sat down next to Jason – the younger man in the throws of a fitful looking sleep, with a distressed look on his face and tear tracks staining his cheeks.

Vaas had tried to kill Snow White so many times, he had set him on fire, shot him and thrown him off of a cliff but still nothing had worked. He just couldn't get him down, nothing could kill him. It was impressive – though he would have never said it out loud, especially not to Hoyt.

It was so impressive to him that he started keeping tabs on him, having a couple of his men just watch him and report back his comings and goings to him. A couple of his men had floated the idea that he might be obsessed with Snow White, or worse, that he might be losing his edge because of him. They didn't last long, not when they disrespected him and questioned him like that.

When Jason had come down to his island, angry and drugged up and ready to kill him, he had almost been glad. Vaas did not care much for the preservation of his own life – at least not as much as he cared about other things. He cared far more for drugs, for killing, for partying and even for Jason's safety far more than he cared for his own. He would have been happy if Jason had been the one to kill him, he had proven himself to be strong enough to kill him. It would have been worth it, if it was him.

But Jason hadn't succeeded – he had come dangerously close, but he hadn't succeeded. Jason had come into his territory, high as hell and ran half cocked at him with a dull, tribal knife. And then he had run off, thinking that he had killed Vaas while Vaas had been reborn – scarred, but reborn – into something stronger, more powerful, so fucked up.

They were so fucked, him and Jason. He had come to the conclusion that Jason couldn't kill him – his last attempt had proven that – and he couldn't kill Jason, but Vaas could keep him. He could keep him, break him down and build him back up into something better than he was before. Something beautiful, something even more amazing than he was before.

When Jason's eyes opened, he noticed that Vaas was in the room with him and he could barely register that any time had passed since Vaas had left him. He tried to sit up and gain his bearings again, only to be gently pushed back down onto the mattress. He let out a soft sigh – so quiet that it may as well have been an exhale – and gave up on any small, insignificant act of rebellion that he might have tried.

Vaas had a mischievous smile on his face, playful in a dangerous sort of way. "Hi Jason. Did you miss me?" He asked in an incredibly casual tone of voice, receiving little more reply out of Jason then a few quiet and shaky breaths. Jason couldn't bring himself to reply either way – if he said that, Yes, he did in fact miss Vaas then he would be sacrificing his dignity. And if he denied it, if he said no that he hadn't wanted to see him again then he might end up angering Vaas and he really didn't want that to happen.

And neither of them would really be the full truth anyways. So he said nothing and he closed his eyes as Vaas stripped him of what little clothing that he was still dressed in. rVaas was obviously eager to see him once again, he couldn't keep his hands off of Jason.

He pressed open mouthed kisses over the length of Jason's throat before he pulled away almost all of the contact suddenly and asked Jason if he knew what he did while he was gone. The younger man cocked his head at that in confusion. He had no idea, and was unsure of how it affected him in any case. He thought it would be a good idea to keep his mouth shut, but he was evidently wrong.

Vaas impatiently snapped his fingers in front of Jason's face, jarring him enough that he tensed up and unsuccessfully tried to edge away from the pirates grasp. "Hey! Are you fucking deaf? You don't want to ignore me, Jason." He snapped, before his tone was gentle again. He pressed butterfly kisses all over Jasons' jaw, the gentle contact more jarring to him than anything else. "Come on, blanquito, play along and ask me what I did." He urged.

Jason frowned, not wanting to speak in fear of impulsively saying something stupid. But he didn't really have much of a choice anyways, all he could really do was do what he was told and hope for the best. "What did… what did you while you were gone?" He said in a dull and hesitant tone of voice.

The playful, maniacal smile that he had before returned in full force. "I went to Citra's temple," Jason held in a breath, expecting to hear about her death. "But she wasn't there. Nuh-uh, the fucking coward went into hiding. Because she knows Jason, she knows that she has nothing now. She knows that she's nothing without her warriors protecting her crazy ass." Jason exhaled shakily as Vaas continued on, "So I grabbed that little fucker with the glasses that follows her around all the time-"

"Dennis?" Jason guessed, speaking without even thinking about it first. He was just glad that Vaas didn't seem to notice – let alone care – about being interrupted.

"Mm, him and a couple of others. Had them spend a few days in the kennels with a couple of my boys. Oh, and the dogs too." He smiled at the remembrance of it, "Didn't take long until the fucks all started squealing, like pigs. Told me everything I wanted to know."

"What did you do to them afterwards?" He blurted out, again without even thinking about the consequences of his actions. It really wasn't good for his health, speaking out like that. This time Vaas didn't react to being interrupted as well as he had before.

"What about them? Who gives a shit about them." He snapped, "Now pay attention." He was lucky enough that Vaas was excited enough by everything that happened that his annoyance didn't last or turn into something even worse. Jason made a mental note to keep his mouth shut from here on out, "So you and me, we're gonna go out and take care of her. But we got time."

The next thing that he realizes is that he's naked and poised underneath Vaas while the pirate lords' hands slide up over his hips, squeezing them and dragging his nails over the taut flesh so that little pink lines were drawn all over the skin of his hips and his thighs. He's not stupid, he knows what Vaas is going to do to him and he is completely sure that in Vaas' mind it's been a long time coming.

It's not the first time he's ever bottomed before – and it's not even the first time that he's been with another man, not by half. When he was in high school, he and Keith would mess around a lot. The two of them would get high off pills, shrooms, weed or whatever else he had brought along and then they would start this bizarre game of "Gay Chicken" that would always end up going just far enough that they had forgone their total straightness, but not far enough for it to not still be considered innocent.

They would just kiss and touch each other – little, proto-homosexual things like that. He didn't know how fondly Keith had remembered the bit of experimenting that they did with each other – he had never bothered to ask, but given everything that had happened to him, Jason doubted that he would want to think back on it, or the island in general, ever again.

Jason had liked touching him a little more than he had been okay with admitting back then and when he grew up and got into college he had taken the path of least resistance. Still, even after that he would occasionally end up flirting with men – at least the men that seemed like they weren't the type to take it badly – just for kicks. Sometimes, he did a lot more than just flirt – but he made sure not to let any of his friends find out or else he probably would have never heard the end of it.

He isn't stupid and he knows what's coming – he doubts it will be hardly as pleasant and innocent as any of his past experiences. But he doesn't cry out or beg for him to stop – for that would be even more humiliating to him then just passively taking the abuse that was inflicted upon him.

He doesn't even squirm much until Vaas kisses him hard and full on the mouth, never giving him a break from the affection, not until he's pushing at Vaas' chest just so he could finally breath again. There was a near amorous look in Vaas' eyes as he finally, finally allowed Jason to break away from the near suffocating kiss.

Vaas tells him to get on his hands and knees and he obeys, taking the path of least resistance whenever he can. Jason feels Vaas pushing down on the space between his shoulder blade and he takes the hint. The position is more than just a little degrading, with his hips pushed up in the air and his face buried in the lumpy mattress, but he stops caring about it the moment that Vaas' tongue swipes over his perineum and delves into his entrance.

He laps over his hole until Jason was a whimpering, squirming mess. He doesn't think that he had ever felt like… that before. It was good – too good, to the point where it could barely be considered pleasurable. It was just so overwhelming, the feeling of it was too much.

Vaas pulled back and told him that he was wet enough now. Jason had little choice but to believe him, as the next thing he knew, his cock was nudging against Jason's entrance. The pirate lord's dick was thick, heavy and hot inside of him. The stretch of him was so unbearable to Jason that he had to breath in short, staccato like huffs to relax enough to take him.

As he bottoms out inside of Jason, Vaas leans down and asks him, speaking quietly in his ear, if he likes it, if he likes having Vaas' dick inside of him. Jason doesn't give any sort of reply outside of an anguished sounding moan as he pushes his hips back and fucks himself on Vaas' cock of his own accord.

He fucks Jason almost gently – at least as gentle as someone like him could get – and with a strange sort of tenderness that he never would have expected from someone like him. He balled his hands into fists and bit down on his lower lip to stifle out any more noises that he couldn't help but make.

Vaas didn't like his lack of response and decided to do something about it. He pulled out of him abruptly – so abruptly that it tore a low, ragged cry out of Jason's throat – and rolled him over onto his back. His knees were pushed up to his chest and spread wide as Vaas positioned himself over him. He unconsciously held his breath in as Vaas sheathed his cock inside of Jason once again. He grabbed onto Jason's legs and used them as leverage as he pounded into him hard.

Jason soon finds that he can't keep his mouth shut – with every push, every thrust and every kiss, he makes more and more noises. They come unbidden and unwilling from his throat and they egg Vaas on to fuck into him even harder. He grabs onto Vaas' arms and hooks his legs around his hips, holding on to him for dear life while Vaas fucks him like an animal.

He's far past caring about how fucked up this all is, he's far past acknowledging that he shouldn't be feeling as good as he is and he is definitely past being willing to hold onto any dignity that he still might have if it means he doesn't get to come soon. As far as he's concerned, these are all things he can worry about later. Much, much, much later.

He doesn't touch his own dick, can't bring himself that low even if he's already in the pits, but it doesn't really matter with the way that he was insistently hitting his prostate with every thrust of his dick. He collapses in on himself when he comes, his stomach and hips sliding down until they were making contact with the mattress below him. He was whimpering and sore while Vaas fucked into him a bit more, taking everything he wanted until he came inside of Jason, letting out a groan as he did so.

Vaas kissed him one more time, and by this point everything had become so absurd that he found himself returning the affection for the first time. As he pulled back, Vaas told him to clean himself up. As Vaas told it, they were going to go and pay the Rakyat and Citra a visit and he should make himself ready for the busy day that he had ahead of him.

It wasn't until Jason was left alone in the room again that the shame, along with a new and pervasive feeling of uncleanliness that had his skin crawling, he felt resurfaced again. He curled up and buried his face in his hands, biting down on his fist to stifle any screams or sobs of frustration that he so desperately wants to let out. It takes him a few minutes to compose himself enough that he's able to pretend at some level of sanity.

By the time that Vaas comes back to take him out, he's tricked himself into a state of excitement at being out in the open – with a knife in his hand and a gun on his hip. When he was like that, he was on top of the world and he'd do anything to experience that freedom, that sense of control and accomplishment all over again.

* * *

The temple was just as beautiful, in its own antiquated sort of way, as it had been the first time that Jason had stepped up to it. Everything looked the same – which was so odd to him, as so much had changed for him and so fast. How long had it been since he had last been with her, waking half-drugged with her straddling his hips? Probably not even a full month. And he was going to kill her, just like that.

He couldn't afford to think about her anymore, he couldn't afford to be sad or have any pity for the natives encircling around the temple, guarding the priestess against any onslaught that might come her way. Once again, he thought with a sort of hopefulness that there was a chance that they wouldn't survive the whole encounter and it could end. A clean break from all of this, finally.

And it sounded so nice, the idea of at least dying with a little bit of his dignity intact was intoxicating to him, but he really doubted that it would end like that. No, in fact, he was sure that they would come out of this feeling just fine and dandy.

Jason and a few other men kept a few steps behind Vaas, a rifle held tight in his hands, as the two of them made their way forward through the forest until they were within shooting distance of the men that were patrolling the temple. They all went down without too much trouble – Jason took three of them down himself.

He shot one in the neck, another he took down with his machete and the third and final of them with a Molotov cocktail. There was a sort of thrill in him about being out in the open again, with a couple of weapons on him. He was powerful again, invincible even – if only for how long until he was locked back up with Vaas again. He savored that powerful feeling that he was having, for he wasn't sure how long it would be until he would be experiencing it once again.

Citra still hadn't left her temple and Vaas was getting impatient. Impatient enough to shoot at the walls of the temple, screaming for her to come out and face him. Face him and end this, and it had been a long time coming too. They both knew that it would end like this – one way or another, one of them had to die to make it stop.

Truth be told, Citra had always believed that she would be the one to come out on top. She had her warriors, she had the love of the natives of Rook and she had her Warrior. She had Jason and he had helped her more than anything. But she didn't have Jason anymore – Vaas had him and that was much worse for her and for her cause than for Jason to just have ended up dead.

Citra stood proud and tall as she walked out – there was no fear in her expression as she regarded Vaas, if anything it looked like disgust was marring her pretty features. Her resolve only diminished – and just slightly at that – when she had noticed Jason standing behind Vaas, his eyes trained to the ground with the intent that he wouldn't need to look at her when Vaas…did whatever he had to do.

Her eyes narrowed momentarily and her mouth set itself in a thin line. Jason didn't have to guess at her disappointment, he could feel it. It was so fucking palpable in the air, so thick that it was close to choking him to death. He was almost thankful when Vaas spread his arms out in a grandiose pose and gloated to her that her warrior was his now and he could do whatever the fuck he wanted with Jason, that Jason wasn't going to be there to do her dirty work anymore. It didn't take a genius to realize that Vaas was talking about him – but a cold flush came over him anyways.

There was nothing untrue about what Vaas said – he would come to find that Vaas didn't ever lie to him, really, maybe half-truths or omissions, but certainly never a lie – he certainly was Vaas' now and Hoyt's as well, whenever the man felt like using him for his own ends.

Vaas was standing close to Citra with a knife to her throat as she hissed about what a coward he was, right to his face and loud enough for everyone within earshot to hear. Vaas smiled and leaned in close to her, whispering something in her ear that forced a look of revelation and indignation right onto her face. She was right in the middle of shouting out something else in their native language when he plunged his knife into her heart.

Jason tried not to look at her as she keeled over and died with little more complaint then an unsteady whimper, gargling blood and bleeding all over the forest floor. And then it was done, she was dead and his life as he knew it – as well as any alliance with the Rakyat that he may have had – was over now.

No turning back now. Even if he had some perfect opportunity in the future, it didn't matter. He was completely _alone_.


	4. Chapter 4

During the time that he had been held captive by Vaas, Jason had come to understand what he liked to see from Jason and how easily Jason could get what he wanted if he played along with it. And he didn't want much, really, all he wanted was to be able to hear from Riley. To know that his brother was safe and sound, maybe even that he was happy, that would mean the world to him.

Then, a small but insistent part of him had to wonder if any of them were even alive – if he had just been conned into obeying, and Riley and all of his friends had been sold off or killed already. Either way, he had to know and he knew that he was going to have to work for it. Because he was not in a position where he had any sort of power or tools worth negotiating. His safety and security were largely dependent upon whether or not he was willing to lay on his back and debase himself for his daily bread.

And he had come to realize that Vaas liked it – really, really liked it – when he seemed to be interested in doing it with him. So here he was, straddling Vaas' hips as he drunkenly kissed him, ground his body down against the other man's as he tried his best to seduce his captor, his tormentor, the man that had shot his brother in cold blood. He lowered himself down on the ground, sitting down on the cool ground, in between the pirate king's spread legs and it was only then that he started to tremble in anticipation of what he was going to do.

He let out a shaky breath, psyching himself up for the act, as he took Vaas' dick out. He felt the pirate lord's fingers running through his hair in a near comforting manner, as Jason took Vaas' dick in his hand and coaxed it to an erection. He closes his eyes and presses his lips to the base of his shaft.

He's good at this, he knows that much, he's been given glowing compliments and praises after praises from his various partners. He knew what he liked and he liked to know that he was making the people that he slept with happy with _him_. He had always liked _that_ a lot.

He kept one hand on Vaas' thigh to keep himself steady and upright, he used his other hand to gently roll Vaas' balls between his fingers. He heard Vaas groan above and smiled to himself, both because he knew that the better he made Vaas feel, the more likely he was to get what he wanted. And because he was more than just a little proud of the fact that he had already elicited a response out of him.

Jason wrapped his lips around the head of the pirate's cock, mindful that he kept his tongue flat against his bottom lip as he hollowed out his cheeks and slowly took each inch of Vaas' dick with a practiced sort of skill to it. Vaas leaned back and let Jason have as much control as he needed to get him off.

Soon enough, Jason lost himself to the motions of it and closed his eyes. He kept them closed until he felt the slightly painful sensation of Vaas' fingers tightening in his hair as he pushed his head down, practically forcing Jason to deep-throat him, as he came. He kept his hand rooted at the back of Jason's neck, squeezing his throat a little, and only let go when he was completely sure that he had swallowed every drop of his come.

When he was let go, his body drooped and he slumped against Vaas' body tiredly. At the very least Vaas seemed to be happy with his… performance. His fingers ran through Jason's hair appreciatively as he swallowed down the last of the pirate lord's cum. Jason smiled up at him, hoping that what he had done had worked out for him.

When Vaas grabbed him by the hair, pulling him upwards until he was at eye level with the pirate, he shuddered in shock. He began to prepare himself for the worst, expecting at least some violence from the pirate. "Now what do you want?" Vaas asked him, his gaze was frighteningly intense as he bore into Jason.

Jason swallowed, eyes downcast as he realized that he had been caught red-handed. This wouldn't end well for him, he thought. Vaas didn't seem like someone that liked to be deceived or lied to. "I…" He struggled to speak, struggled to say a word in his own defense, but he came up with nothing. His mouth dried up and his tongue became heavy like it was stuck to the roof of his mouth.

"Do you think I'm fucking stupid?" Vaas asked him in a voice so deadly quiet that it sent a chill down Jason's spine. Jason didn't say a word in reply, couldn't bring himself to say a word and that only pissed Vaas off even more. "HEY! What did I tell you about ignoring me? Hm?" He smacked Jason's cheek, hard enough to sting. "You got a good poker face, Snow White, you do. But I know all of your little fucking tells. Do. Not. Try. To. Fuck. With. Me. Again."

"Okay, okay, okay! Shit, just let me go…" Jason babbled nervously, trying – and failing – to edge away from him and the ironclad grip that he had on his hair. It was only when Vaas let him go – and he had edged out of arm's reach for the pirate – that he told him that all he wanted to do was know how his brother was doing. What he _really_ wanted was to be able to hear his voice, really know what his day to day life was like – but he doubted that he would get as much as that.

Vaas kissed him one more time, biting down on his lower lip hard enough to draw blood as he drew back before he handed him what looked like a burner phone. "You want to talk to him? Fine, go on and give him a call." He said, "And no more lying." He adds with warning present in his voice. "You got ten minutes. We're going out today."

Jason nods frantically in agreement as Vaas leaves the room, giving him a bit of privacy – though he really didn't have to, as Jason was in no place to just tell him to leave – as he frantically dialed his families home number into the shitty little burner phone that Vaas handed to him.

 _213-312-5023._ The number came to him instantly – muscle memory taking over him as he punched the number in. He dials it three times, _213-312-5023, 213-312-5023, 213-312-5023_ until finally, someone picks up the phone. Riley grumbled out a tired sounding greeting, followed by a briskly spoken question of who it was on the other line.

"It's me, I mean, it's Jason." He blurted out, excited to hear his brothers' voice for the first time in what felt like forever. "I, I finally… I didn't have any access to a phone."

"You're alive?" He asked, sounding like he was dumbfounded by the revelation of that. "They told us that you were fine but-" he sighed in a world-weary sort of way, "but we didn't believe it, of course. Why would we? We all thought that you were dead."

Jason felt the urge to apologize for some reason, even though he had no control over anything that had happened to them in at least months. "Well, I'm not dead. So there's that." He said in a forcefully chipper tone of voice, "Not yet, at least…" He added, speaking lowly, under his breath.

He had hoped that Riley wouldn't have caught what he said, but he hadn't spoken lowly enough. "Hey, don't talk like that." He chided Jason before his tone lightened somewhat and he suggested calling their mother over – she had been so sure that both Jason and Grant had died on the island together, just like the rest of them had been so sure that Jason had been killed by Vaas.

"No, don't, please don't!" He snaps, before he can stop himself from saying it. "I… I mean I don't want her to hear me, mom she's… it's better if she just thinks I'm dead." His tone of voice is low sounding, defeated and it shows Riley just how much being in captivity has affected him already.

"That's pretty fucking dark, Jay," Riley tells him, and though he doesn't say anything back to that he agrees. It is dark. It is depressing. And it's the best that he can do. Jason changed the subject from himself almost immediately – he didn't want to have to talk about himself if he could help it – and rapidly asked the younger what had been going on in his life.

Never before had Jason been so interested in all the inane comings and goings of Riley's life, so the younger brother had been shocked enough that he told Jason everything that he could in the short amount of time that they had to speak. He told Jason about the good things – like how Liza's acting career had been flourishing, how Daisy had been going into training as a therapist, how he had finally been psychologically cleared to fly again.

They talked about the bad things as well – how Keith had assaulted someone that he would have sworn was Buck, how Oliver's parents had checked him into rehab. Jason didn't talk about his own experiences – he couldn't, he refused to – so he was happy to hear about how everyone else had been doing, how so much had happened in the few months since they had gotten home to California.

Everything was so different, with so little time being passed – sometimes he would think about how he would cope if he was ever allowed to go home to his family. He didn't think he would be able to keep up with them. For better or worse, all of them had – or were at least on their way to – bouncing back.

Jason didn't think he could, and by the time that Vaas snapped at him to get off the phone, he was almost glad that he was forced to be here with the pirates and slavers. At least when he was here, he didn't feel like he had to fight his own instincts to keep up with them – to try to be normal.

* * *

Jason hadn't yet had the opportunity to see Hoyt's compound before he had been taken in by the pirates and forced over to their side. He was not all that surprised to find that Hoyt's territory was far more developed than Vaas' territory was. Of course, it was. It was meant to cater to Hoyt Volker and all of the private military that he had hired to keep all of his "business operations" safe – not just outcast natives and the drugged up pirates that were in Vaas' employ.

Vaas kept a protective arm around him as the two of them walked through the compound. Vaas kept an arm around Jason the entire time, holding him close to his side. He didn't seem entirely comfortable here, he eyed the privateers warily, as if he suspected them of doing something unsavory to them – to their credit, they seemed to have a detached sort of respect (or fear, more likely) for Vaas and they wouldn't just run at Jason if they knew what was good for them.

Soon, they were standing in front of Hoyt, who seemed pleased enough to see them. Jason kept quiet as the other two men spoke casually to one another about their illegal practices. The drug running, the human trafficking, the kidnapping – all of that seemed, to them, like it was a perfectly normal way of making money. If Jason wasn't so used to it, it might have made him feel sick.

Thankfully, his existence was almost wholly ignored. To them, he was little more than furniture right now – less than human and only to be acknowledged when he was needed. He closed his eyes and let himself believe that he did not exist.

That none of this was real, that it was all a horribly vivid dream with too many twists and turns, that he would wake up in his apartment any moment now and he would call Grant and tell him all about it, how real it felt and how scared he had been. Grant would think that he was being stupid but he would comfort him anyway because that's just the type of person that he is. Was.

Jason was pulled out of his thoughts when he heard Hoyt said the word, "-Hostages." in a cheerful sort of way. And then he couldn't ignore them, his brain just wouldn't let him. He perked up in attention as they spoke on, "At least thirty of them, if you can believe it. It's lucky that they did too, profits have been stagnating, but they always do in the winter months. I'll need you to go down there, of course, and take care of them." He demanded, "As soon as possible."

And by that, he meant "Now." in no uncertain terms. Vaas doubted that all of them would be worthy of sale, but he would have a lot of fun killing the ones that were rejected. Bringing Jason along would definitely be useful as well, he needed to get over his distaste for killing and harming – in the American's eyes at least – innocent people.

Thrilled by the thought of it, Vaas grinned in a predatory sort of way at Jason and the American realized what hostages on the beach meant for him. Jason's fingers were ghosting over his mouth like he was trying to stop himself from vomiting at the thought of going down there with Vaas. His distaste for the situation was so obvious that Hoyt decided to take the opportunity to have a moment alone with the American and see what he was really made of.

The slaver made a mockery of a sympathetic sound, "Looks like he's feeling a little sick." He said, his tone almost mocking. "Don't worry, I'll watch your boy here." He assured Vaas, looking at Jason in a way that made him feel as though nothing good was going to happen to him if he was left with the human trafficker alone. For a moment, he wondered if he should just offer himself up to go with Vaas after all, but he couldn't find the voice or the will to speak up about it.

So he stayed quiet while Vaas looked over at him with an indiscernible expression on his face. If he was anyone else, Jason might have thought that he was worried. About him. He wasn't going to even think about allowing his mind to go there – he could let himself believe a lot of things to make this whole fucked up situation that he was in a livable one.

He could focus on the fact that Vaas was attractive and the sex wasn't as hard for him as it could have been, he could ignore that Vaas and Hoyt had been the driving force behind ruining his life as he had known it, he could even find security in the fact that Vaas was not just going to kill him, now that he had Jason in his clutches.

But he couldn't – and wouldn't – delude himself into thinking that the pirate gave a damn about him. He wasn't that far gone. Not yet. Vaas squeezes his shoulder and reminds him to be good before he was out the door, leaving him and Hoyt alone.

If given the choice to spend the rest of his days locked in a room with either Vaas or Hoyt, Jason would choose Vaas every time, within a heartbeat. If only because he knew how to deal with Vaas and the familiarity of him made being around him feel much less dangerous because he at least had a general idea of what Vaas wanted, what he liked and what would get him punished. He had very little experience with Hoyt – the only thing that he really knew about him was that he was incredibly sadistic and he really liked acquiring vast amounts of money.

He's not comfortable with being around him without Vaas hovering over his shoulder, and he doesn't like to look him in the eye for long periods of time, or at all, so he keeps his head down and his eyes downcast, to avoid any prolonged eye contact. "Take a seat." Hoyt directed him, gesturing toward one of the chairs in front of him. Jason obeyed him quickly enough as he was already so accustomed to mindlessly following orders. He sat stiffly and took to staring at his hands as he wrung them nervously in his lap. He had successfully avoided eye contact with Hoyt until the slaver forced Jason to look at him. "You're so quiet these days, Jason." He purred, "Did Vaas already fuck the will out of you? You were so fiery before. Or have you started liking it when he fucks you, already?"

Jason let out a calming breath, putting forth effort not to respond to the jab. It was fine, he thought, he could deal with a bit of twisted slut shaming and victim blaming. He could deal with this. "It always happens, eventually, they always forget who they were before and become solely dependent on their masters." The slaver commented in a wistful sort of way, "That's fine, breaking them and putting them back together is the most entertaining part. I just didn't expect you to be so complacent-"

What was he supposed to do, Jason thought bitterly, Act out and risk the painful deaths of every person that he had ever cared about?

"Especially seeing how Vaas shot your older brother in front of you." Jason went cold at that, he had been doing so much to forget all of the things that Vaas and his group had done to him. "Do you think of him bleeding out in front of you while you're on your back?"

Jason glared at him, "Fuck you." He snarled through his teeth, "If I didn't think that my brother would end up getting killed, I would have sliced your throat months ago." He had no idea what to expect from Hoyt after he said that, but it sure as hell was not the pleased grin spread across his face as if Jason had just given him exactly what he wanted. He sunk down in his chair and emotionally prepared himself for the physical and mental distress that he was no doubt going to be put under in the next few moments.

"There you are." The slaver said like he had been waiting for Jason to lash out at him since he had come in here. "I thought Vaas might have already broken you." He clicked his tongue in a mockery of disappointment, "That would have been a shame. But! Since you seem to be doing just fine, how about you and I play a game, hmm?"

The American let out a world-weary sigh, "What kind of game?" Jason asked, more for the other mans' benefit than for his own. Hoyt responded to that pleasantly and asked him how good he was at poker and he tried his best to undersell his skill, so that Hoyt would be less interested in playing with him – which only led to being smacked hard in the mouth, hard enough that he could taste blood and the whole bottom of his face stung from the impact of it. "I'm pretty damn good." He finally admitted.

"Excellent. That's just what I like to hear." Hoyt said, before calling someone and telling them to 'bring the group of runaways in' and in moments a group of terrified looking would-be slaves were dragged into the room, sobbing and pleading for their lives. Jason felt pity for them – it was hard not to, he had been in the exact position that they had been in before. And he hadn't fared much better either.

"Now this is a group that tried to run off, cut into my profits and killed a few of my privateers." Hoyt's tone didn't seem angry, but Jason didn't buy that for one second, underneath a thin veneer of calm he could tell that he was fuming. "So you, and I, are going to make sure that they learn their lesson."

Jason didn't want to do this, but he feared that he had no choice. "You want me to kill them?" He asked in a miserable and defeated sort of way. When he had been out on Rook, it wasn't so much the killing that he had enjoyed as the fact that he had survived each encounter. He risked his life with every slice of his machete and pull of his pistol and he came out a winner. A _warrior._

But this? These people were broken down, chained up and defeated. It felt wrong having to kill them. It made him feel like he was doing something terrible and wrong, something that made him feel sick and dirty and low inside. And he hadn't even started it. His emotions would only get more intense as the night continued on.

"I take it that you don't want to hurt them." Hoyt inferred, "That's fine. Well, they have to die, of course, I would be an idiot if I let them live, but…if you beat me at a hand of cards, at the end of the hand you can kill them as painlessly as you like since you are such a humanitarian these days."

"And if you win?" Jason questioned, wary of the man's intentions.

"If I win, you help me torture them for as long as I want, in whatever way that I want," Hoyt spoke about it like this was an incredibly fair deal. Jason swallowed and nodded, getting himself comfortable as Hoyt dealt the both of them out their cards.

Jason was dealt an incredibly good first hand – but that didn't matter much, he had come to realize that winning at poker had more to do with how well you could cheat and lie through your teeth. Standing off against someone like Hoyt, he figured that he was evenly matched. They played five games, one for each person tied up in the room, and Jason won the first four. Jason shot the ones he was able to kill in the head, right between the eyes so that they were dead before the felt anything.

He had believed that he was doing good, but his luck began to slip at the last game. His hand was shit and he could just tell that Hoyt had something amazing by the way that he was looking at him.

"Straight flush." He said, presenting the cards in front of Jason's face mockingly. "I doubt you have anything better than that." Jason grimly showed his own cards – three of a kind. Not bad, but not a royal flush. He knew what he had to do.

"Let's just get this over with." He said, fully intent on emotionally blocking out everything that he did to the poor man in front of him. Hoyt made him break every bone in his victim's body, pull out all of his teeth and cut him deep in several places before he allowed Jason to kill him. By that point, he had been begging for it.

The bodies of the men that had been forced to play Hoyt's deadly game with Jason were littered around the room – bleeding and decomposing all over the floor in real time. He felt sick, knowing that he would have been forced to kill innocent people either way and there had been no avoiding it.

Jason suddenly felt like the air was too thick for him to breath and he got up, making his way towards the exit before Hoyt grabbed him by the throat and asked him where the hell he thought that he was going to go. The American had no answer for that and went limp in Hoyt's arms, giving up any sort of struggle that he may have had. He didn't even do much squirming when the slaver presented an old fashioned bottle in front of him and told him that this was his prize for winning.

Hoyt forced the bottle in between his lips, pushing it forward until it was almost touching the back of his throat. Then he forced his head back so that the bittersweet, medicinal tasting liquid was pooling in his mouth. Jason had no idea what the older man was trying to force him to drink, but he didn't think that it would bode well for him to swallow it. So he didn't. He allowed the liquid to pool in his mouth impotently and he forced himself to breathe only through his nose. Eventually, the slaver tired of Jason's stubborn disobedience and rubbed at Jason's throat, forcing him to swallow down the rest of the liquid.

Hoyt let him go then and Jason suddenly felt like holding up the weight of his own body was too much for him to handle. His knees buckled and in moments, he had collapsed onto the ground. His brain went into total fight or flight mode, and for once in his life maybe even for the first time, he chose flight.

He crawled away from the man on his belly, the drugs in his system made it incredibly difficult to get away. He didn't get more than a few feet away before he was being dragged by the hair, up to his feet and back to the bloody poker table that they had just been sitting at.

" _ **You can fuck 'em, boys. But be gentle…"**_

The memory of those words hit him like a ton of bricks as he felt himself being pushed down with a firm, ring-clad hand until his stomach was pressed flush against the splintery wood of the makeshift poker table. Somehow, he doubted that Hoyt could even spell the word, 'gentle.'

He grasped at the shoddy table to keep himself still as he felt Hoyt strip his lower body, quickly and carelessly prep him before he was fucking into him. Hoyt used him like he was little more than a sex toy, not saying a word to him or trying to bring Jason any sort of pleasure from the act – unwanted or not. Jason had no idea if he should be grateful or not, all he could do was close his eyes and wait for him to finish.

He could at least take solace in the fact that the drugs he had been forced to take made ignoring everything that he felt incredibly easy. He felt warmth pooling in his insides and moments later, the slaver pulled out of him. Jason tried to get himself as far away from as possible.

He only managed to get a few feet away, in the corner of the room. Jason curled up on the ground, refusing to move until Hoyt snapped at him to get up – they had another game to play and he was not done with Jason just yet. Jason sat up on shaky legs, barely coherent enough to hold his head up let alone make his way back to the poker table. He managed to make his way to the table, walking with about as much grace as a baby deer as he did so, half dressed and dirty looking from the hard fucking that he had just taken. "I… I'll deal." He offered, speaking quietly.

He tries to ignore the glib and shark-like look on Hoyt's face as he deals out the cards. He tries even harder to ignore the feeling of resentment building up inside of him. Resentment for Vaas, for Hoyt, but most of all resentment for himself. He was helpless – he could not do much else other than passively take the abuse that the two men had to dish out for him.

By the time that Vaas returned and took him home, the new horror of his situation had set in so clearly for him – that Vaas may have been a monster, a demon but he was nothing compared to Hoyt. That Vaas at least seemed to care enough about him that he didn't almost die for his sexual gratification and that he felt so much less like he was a disposable 'thing' when he was in the pirates hands – that Jason had clung to him like a child as he was dragged back off to Vaas' personal island.


	5. Chapter 5

Ethan Wexler was having the worst vacation of his life. He had been strong armed by his girlfriend and the rest of his friends into a skydiving trip, that he had never even wanted to go on in the first place, and come to find that it was some sort of human trafficking scheme.

He had woken up with one of the men sitting outside of his cage, taunting the lot of them by sadistically telling them what would happen to them if their families didn't come up with the money they wanted. Ethan was sure that even if they got the money, they would still be killed or sold. His outlook on the entire situation at hand was bleak but he tried to keep on a strong face on for the sake of his friends. It was getting harder and harder for him to do that every single day that he was tied down in these bamboo cages.

There was a man who would regularly torment them with a sadistic sort of sureness to it – a man with a mo-hawk wild look in his kohl stained eyes. He didn't seem to care much about the state of the people that were in the process of being sold off into slavery, torturing all of them for the hell of it every single day. Just last night he had dragged Ethan and another prisoner out of their cages held them at gunpoint and forced them to fight each other until the other was unconscious. Ethan won the fight, but just barely. He was still bleeding in several places, and one of his eyes was so bruised and swollen that he could barely see out of it. Still. He had won. And that was all that counted right now, wasn't it?

Lately, someone else had come to watch over them, a young man – similar in age, height and build to him, dressed in a dirty and worn out blue V-neck and khakis. He had the look of a tourist like he should have been on the other side of these cages – that watched over all of them with a detached sort of indifference. He didn't say a word, didn't bother to torment them, just watched until the maniac came back to torment them. He also seemed to have some sort of connection with this man. He would grope him and murmur things in his ear and he would smile back at the pirate seemingly in earnest, until his back was turned and a dour expression would take over his features once again.

Out of curiosity, he asked one of the other prisoners – an older man who seemed to be a native of the island – who had been sitting in that cage since he had been thrown in there with him if he knew who he was. The older man let out a derisive, hateful sort of scoff, "That's Snow White." He said, spitting out the derogatory sounding moniker like it was poison on his tongue. "He almost overturned Hoyt's trafficking ring, a few months back, now he's Vaas' bitch."

He could see that, he thought, but still found it odd and asked why someone would do that. The native prisoner did not take kindly to that and spat on the ground in his distaste. "Doesn't matter why he did it. Don't care why." He shook his head, "He sold all of us out to Hoyt, killed our head priestess and put us all in chains." His tone of voice was acidic, hateful. "He's a traitor, he should burn for what he's done."

From there on out Ethan Wexler started watching him – more to quell his own boredom and the sense of impending doom that had been taking over him than anything else – and taking note of the routine that he seemed to keep. It was always the same, around midday, he would be led around the camp as the man he would soon find out was named Vaas would patrol around antagonizing and torturing all of the prisoners in their cells.

Usually after Vaas would finish his "rounds," he would go looking for Snow White and come back around – with an arm over the others' waist, holding him in a possessive grip as they walked around the camp until they would eventually leave the prisoners on their own for the night. That was usually how it went, until Jason had been given the trust to watch over them and only then would they be allowed some relief from the usual torments that Vaas and his cohorts put upon them.

The times that Jason was in charge of watching them, the prisoners finally felt like they could relax. He would usually keep some distance from the cages and not bother coming towards them for any other reason than to bring their daily meals, or in the case of some kind of emergency.

Like when one of the pirates had cut up the leg of one of the girls in the cage across from his and he'd come in and made sure that it stayed uninfected, grumbling the entire time under his breath like he was loathe to be there in the first place. He didn't seem to want to be in the camp at all, when he thought about it, but he never bothered to even try and leave and it made the prisoners wonder what he was even doing with the pirates, when he seemed to hate being associating with almost all of them except their leader, Vaas.

And even with Vaas, his affections towards the pirate king seemed like it was a put on more than anything else. Jason's role in the camp was a mystery to them, and they had so little fodder to entertain themselves that it became their first and only source of entertainment to talk in hushed whispers about him. If Jason noticed this or was bothered by it, he didn't look like it or make any mention of their seeming obsession with him.

After enough days of Jason taking shifts watching them – with only about a handful of pirates hanging around the camp as a kind of backup protection – that Ethan came up with a plan to escape the camp. Around the same time each day that Jason was made to watch the camp, he would disappear for quite some time. Usually, the rest of the camp would be sparse too, sparse enough that – if he could manage to get out of his cage in time – he would be able to make it out of the camp. But he would have to do it alone.

He couldn't bring risk bringing any of his newly made friends in the cage – Nick and Sarah – or search out the rest of his friends that had been kidnapped along with him. No, he would have to get himself free first and then he could get help. Real, professional help. Capable people, that could do so much more for them than he would ever be able to.

As soon as Ethan finally got the perfect chance to make it out of the camp, he took it immediately, not caring if his failure meant death. He didn't want to know what end that staying in the cage and passively waiting would mean for him. He managed to get himself untied and out of the cage just fine and he figured that the rest would be easy and it almost was. No one noticed that he was gone until he was at the very edge of the camp, it was just rotten luck that the hill facing where Ethan was running off to was just the place that Jason liked to sit and meditate to ground himself.

Jason sighed as he noticed the young man in torn clothes running down the hill, so close to the edge of the island that he could actually escape. "Fuck." He muttered under his breath, wondering if he could just pretend not to notice that he had run off. He really didn't want to be in the business of hunting down escaped prisoners. It felt like it was below him, to be chasing them down, and in another way it felt like it was wrong. That he was doing something horrible and wrong by actively reinforcing the oppressive system that Vaas and Hoyt had them all trapped and subjugated beneath.

Jason wondered if he could get away with pretending not to see him running off, let him try his luck in the jungle. Maybe he would even make it to what was left of Amanaki Village and start the cycle all over again with the smattering of oppressed natives that were still alive, struggling to keep themselves safe and huddled away from Hoyt's attentions.

He sighed and closed his eyes as he let out a shaky breath. Debating with himself about it – if he decided not to go after him, the pirates around the camp might find out about it and then Vaas would be angry with him. But if he did, he would be just that much more complicit in the human trafficking on Rook island. In the end, he didn't really have much of a choice in the first place and he quickly armed himself and ran off in the escaped prisoner's direction.

Jason was a quick runner. He had always been incredibly athletic and his time on Rook had ensured that he had a lot of practice with it as well. So it was really no trouble for him to catch up with a prisoner that had been beaten and given very little food and water. Once he was within grabbing distance of Ethan, he snapped at the escaped prisoner to turn around and stop running.

It wasn't as if he didn't expect Ethan to put up any sort of fight, but he thought that it was fair to give him some sort of fighting chance. Ethan scrambled to get away and Jason fired off a warning shot, shooting right next to his foot. "I told you to stop running." He said in a calm, authoritative tone of voice. "There isn't any good end to this." He added, hoping that he could convince him to come back quietly. He doubted that he would be successful, but it was the best option that he had. "I don't think that anyone knows you ran off." He explained, "You could just- look, no one has to know. No one would get hurt if you just come back."

"If you think I'm coming back there, then you're just as crazy as they are!" Ethan blurted out as he edged away, scooting back on his butt away from Jason's purposeful stride towards him. He hadn't meant to say it out loud – and he couldn't have known how Jason would react to it – but he surely had not expected Jason to launch himself at Ethan, toppling the two of them over.

Ethan tried to fight back against the other and they wrestled around for some time until Jason was able to take his handgun out and shoot him in the left leg and the left arm, immobilizing him and leaving him in an incredibly pained state.

Jason huffed out in several staccato breaths, anger overtaking him as he noticed the way that the escapee was looking at him. Like he was dangerous, like he was a monster and worse like he was _crazy._ "Stop looking at me like that!" He snapped, before he fell into a rage, his hands wrapping around the younger man's throat and squeezing tight until the wet, choking gasps of the escapee under him filled his senses.

"I am not crazy. I'm not." He babbled, tone bordering right between righteous fury and desperate fear like he was afraid of himself, afraid of what he could be pushed to do in any given moment. He sounded both hysterical and out of breath like he was on the precipice between sanity and insanity.

It was terrifying and all Ethan could do was plead with his eyes for the man not to kill him right then and there. "Don't- stop looking at me like that!" Jason snapped, pushing down tighter on his throat, compressing his air flow until the hostage was looking up at him with tear-filled, terrified looking eyes as his body went into fight or flight mode. Ethan desperately clawed at Jason's hands – focusing all of his time and energy on pure _survival_. His heart caught in his throat and he began to hyperventilate, sobbing uncontrollably as the reality that he might die right now came to him.

Jason didn't realize just what he was doing, he was so incensed at the idea that someone was looking at him like _that_. Like he was some kind of crazy person and he hated being judged like that. "I fucking told you to stop looking at me like that. You are…you're nothing. Nothing." He seethed in a deadly quiet tone of voice. "I could kill you right now, and it wouldn't – it wouldn't matter. _You_ don't matter."

Moment by moment of silence had Jason gradually calming down. He took his hands from Ethan's throat, as if he had been in a trance, and shallowly delighted in the fact that the escaped prisoner wasn't saying anything back now. He was quiet as a mouse. Probably terrified of what Snow White could do when he was angry. Jason had no doubts that he would come back quietly now, he would be too afraid to do anything else, he thought grimly.

Jason shook the prisoner below him, "Get up." He snapped, thinking that the young man was faking it. He growled in frustration, "You're only making things worse for yourself." He warned, some of his resolve crumbling down as he looked at his face, inspecting him. His skin was pale and sickly looking and his glassy eyes were left wide open and his tongue stuck out, flat against his chin like a dead fish.

It was disgusting and Jason jumped back as he took the image of him in. Disgusting. He stepped back once, twice and then a third time to try and distance himself from the corpse in front of him. "I didn't mean, I didn't mean that." He muttered to himself, looking at in horror. It's not the first time that he has ever killed before, but it's definitely the first time that he's killed someone and it wasn't in – arguably – self-defense.

The corpse before him had been a prisoner, relatively innocent and he had slaughtered him before he had even realized what he had done. He had to get away, he thought, he needed to leave now. He turned on his heel, ready to run back to the camp and try to convince himself that nothing had happened. But he didn't have the chance to do that when he felt his arm being wrenched back forcefully behind his back. He cried out in shock from both sensations of the dull pain of his body being manipulated like that against his will. It hurt. It hurt so damn bad and his instincts told him to fight back.

So he did. He twisted and writhed in his captors' grip, squirming around like a wild animal until he was free enough to elbow him in the stomach.

Once he was free from the others' grasp, Jason stepped back a few feet, squeezing his eyes shut and centering himself for a few moments, having the abstract and instinctual feeling that he had done something terribly wrong. Once he opened his eyes again the gravity of how deeply he had fucked up hit him right in the face. As he looked into his attackers face to find out that it was Vaas and just as he recognized the face in front of him, the pirate slammed his head back against the thick wood of a tree behind him.

The impact dazed him and left him vulnerable enough for Vaas to hoist him up once again. He could barely hear a thing, like his ears were waterlogged, as Vaas snapped at him in an infuriated tone of voice. He could make a few words out, here and there, but he understood the message behind them more than anything else,"You're gonna pay for that." That was what Vaas' very essence projected to him and he went decidedly limp as the pirate carried him off back to camp.

Jason was sitting, with his hands tied behind his back in a tiny room that was no larger than a utility closet while Vaas stood in front of him, an infuriated expression besetting his features. He sunk down, making himself smaller and smaller until he seemed tiny and insignificant.

He wasn't afraid – not really, at least – of what Vaas might do to _him_. Jason was sure that if he did do something bad enough that Vaas would decide that he was done with Jason, that Jason had gone too far and he had royally screwed not only himself but everyone that was even minutely associated with him, then he would know it.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Vaas asked him, his tone suddenly seeming less like a murderous screed against him. "You fucking killed some good product, you know that? Hoyt already had a buyer hooked up for him and now I gotta figure something out so he doesn't try and kill both you and me."

"I'm sorry." He replied, head tilted downward in a show of shame and submission. He took to looking up at Vaas through his lashes, gauging the others' expression and not really liking what he saw. "I don't, I don't know, he was-" Jason frowned, trying to come up with anything better than, _'He was looking at me like I'm a crazy person._ ' because saying that out loud wouldn't do him very well, even if he had truly not meant to kill the prisoner.

"-I couldn't get him to stop struggling, I was just trying to get him to calm down." It wasn't a total lie, Jason thought in a self-justifying way. In a sense, he was still being truthful. "I guess that I went too far with him. I'm sorry." He said, trying to appeal to whatever sense of decency and forgiveness that he might have buried deep down inside of him.

Vaas came towards him and leaned down to his level and for a second Jason thought he might have actually won him over, against all the odds. Vaas pressed his lips against the underside of Jason's jaw before he reared back and smacked him with what felt like a pistol. He passed out moments later.

Hours later, Jason woke up on the dirty cement floor of the room that Vaas had brought him to. He let out a soft, aggrieved sigh and curled in on himself, willing himself back to sleep. He knows, deep down, that he was not being punished for killing the hostage that had tried to run. Vaas wouldn't care less if the hostages died and Hoyt's profits stagnated a bit. No, he was being punished for not immediately falling in line with all of the things that Vaas wanted him to do. He felt a sob welling in his throat, terror at the realization of how deeply he had fucked up.

The worst thing about it is that he can't help but feel that it's his own fault that he's in this mess. If he would have just sat down, shut up, calmed himself down and done everything that he was told to do then everything would have been fine. He would have been just fine.

Jason has no idea how long he had been trapped, with his knees tucked against his chest, in that too small cage but he knows that it was much too long when Vaas pulled him out and commented on how filthy he was and the thought that it was Vaas' fault that he was in this position did not even cross his mind. He was just so grateful that he wasn't locked in there any more that he didn't care.

None of that mattered to him, not anymore, so long as he wasn't in there anymore he didn't care about anything else. He felt like his entire world was spinning round and round as he was pulled to his feet and led into a bathroom with a large, aged claw foot bathtub sitting right in the middle of the room. He could barely comprehend anything that had happened to him as his clothes were peeled off of his body and he was pulled into the tub.

He faded in and out of consciousness, still too exhausted and overwhelmed to fully understand anything that was going on. So he just went with the motions. "Didn't mean to leave you in there so long," Vaas commented in a breezy sort of tone as he gently washed Jason with a somewhat coarse feeling washcloth all over. He went on to tell Jason how he had been caught up on the other side of the island with an emergency that Hoyt needed him to fix.

Jason wasn't sure that he believed that – he had done this to him more than one time – but he didn't have the emotional nor the physical energy to argue with Vaas about it. The truth didn't really matter to him anyways and nothing good could come from arguing with Vaas about anything.

Eventually, he found himself pulled out of the makeshift tub and made to stand on his own. It was the first time in days that he had done that, and it was hard for him to keep himself afloat while Vaas took a few moments to hand him a long stretch of cloth to use to dry himself off.

The American was still a bit dazed, but he didn't feel quite as empty and dull as he had moments before. He walked out of the bathroom, not thinking about whether or not the pirate would have approved of him running off. He made it as far as the bed that they usually shared and slammed himself down on the mattress. He let out a tiny whine as he settled himself down, the somewhat lumpy surface feeling like the softest thing that he had laid upon, after almost a week of stewing on a concrete floor.

He was on the verge of sleep when he felt someone squeeze his shoulders in a manner that was less than gentle, prodding him and quietly demanding his attention. "Jason, Jason. Get up, motherfucker, I got something for you." The pirate cooed to him. Jason struggled to get himself back up from his melted status on the mattress. Eventually, he managed to pull himself up to sit flush against the wall.

"You have something for me?" He replied in a weak sounding tone of voice. He let out a light, amused scoff as he was presented with a heavily packed blunt, smoke billowing out of its embers leaving a not unpleasant smell in its wake. "Oh." He exclaimed as he regarded it with a casual interest.

"You look like you need a fucking wind down, hermano," Vaas told him, taking a few puffs off of the blunt before he handed it off to Jason. "This is some good shit." He commented in a breezy tone, "And I'm feeling real generous right now." He added as he eased himself down until he was laying flat on his back. Jason closed his eyes, drawing himself back to his happy place as he inhaled each drag slowly.

It didn't take long until he was high enough to feel like he had no troubles in the world at all. Every sensation that Jason felt was both dulled down and incredibly intense as Vaas sat him down next to him. Jason was so touched starved that he almost immediately curled up into Vaas' - grabbing onto the pirate's singlet to pull him in even closer. "You're warm…" He murmured, in a content and sleepy voice. "But you aren't, it feels like…it's nice. So _nice_."

He could hear the pirate laughing – probably at him – but he sounded so far away that Jason couldn't really focus on the noise or parse what words he was saying and he couldn't really bring himself to care about it in any case. He pressed his cheek against Vaas' chest and hummed softly and contentedly.

All thoughts about everything that had happened in the past days had disappeared from his mind right then. All he felt right then was a hazy sort of contentedness. He just felt right, like he was right where he needed to be and doing exactly what he needed to be doing. Everything moved so slowly and so hazily that before he realized what was happening, he was flipped over on his back and Vaas was poised on his stomach in between his legs, gently stroking Jason's cock.

Jason's senses were so keyed up that everything that Vaas did to him had him moaning and whimpering helplessly from the stimulation of it all. He could hear the pirate laughing to himself about his partner's excited responses right before he wrapped his lips around the head of Jason's cock.

He doesn't do this often for Jason, so he's sure to make it good for him now that he's given him the privilege. He easily takes Jason's dick all the way down his throat and allows the slightly younger man to lazily thrust his hips against Vaas' mouth. It doesn't take him long to come as he was already overstimulated by the time that Vaas started blowing him and when he comes he collapses in on himself in a dramatic show of exhaustion.

Vaas pulled up and pressed his lips to Jason, passing the younger man's own cum right back into his mouth as the two of them lazily kissed each other. When the two of them finally settled down and Jason finally got to sleep again, he had dreamed of home, of safety, of being back with his family.

The next morning, when he walked through the camp on his own once again, he couldn't help but notice the way that the prisoners were looking at him. They were scared of him, they thought he was a monster. The realization of what he had done sunk in for him in that moment, the realization that he was a monster. He had killed an innocent person, who had done nothing to him, for no good reason.

He had done a lot of terrible things while he was on Rook, he had left trails of dead bodies in his wake but none of them had been even remotely innocent – he had been able to rationalize it, to let himself enjoy it because he was technically just defending himself. But no matter how many mental gymnastics that he pulled, he couldn't remotely justify what he had done and it made him feel sick with himself.

Jason was chock full of guilt and remorse for the awful, reprehensible thing that he had just done, and he couldn't just hammer it out of his mind, like it never happened, just like he had always been able to do in the past. His throat felt like it was full of cotton balls and a wave of nausea came over him. He had to get away he thought as he moved past the cages, brushing past whatever men in his way as he tried to get himself as far as possible away from any other free person in the camp.

He found his solitude in a small, empty clearing and sat himself down on the dewy grass below him. He tucked his knees close to his chest and let out a sob. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck. Fuck!" He rambled curses to himself, repeating the word over and over again until it held no meaning for him anymore. In his anxiety, he took to running his fingers through his hair and pulling at the end of his overgrown locks, pulling a few strands straight out from his scalp as he did so.

He was dizzy and sick, all of the mixed emotions that he felt mixed together into a toxic bubble inside of his stomach. The most revolting thing about what he had done was that, it was just too easy to go through with it, even if he felt awful about it now, even if he beat himself up about it over and over again, he couldn't deny that it had just been so easy for him. And just what kind of person did that make him? Not the kind that he had ever thought he would be, that was for damn sure.


End file.
